As Fires Smolder
by Yorick's Talking Skull
Summary: With them, words never were, nor ever will be enough. Silence speaks, and so does fire… One-shot.


**As Fires Smolder**: With them, words never were, nor ever will be enough. Silence speaks, and so does fire…When everything is said and done, when fires burn and destroy, we hope love is what remains. Is it, though?

**Author's Note: I wrote this sometime ago. My computer was being nice today, so I decided to give this to you. Ah, watch out, it might be a bit dusty from storage in Word. *passes story* Don't mind the fic mites.**

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><p>"<em>In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story."<em> —Walter Cronkite

**Richard Castle**

I was always told that your life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die.

I never believed it.

How could your whole life come flowing through you like a wave of memories in a single moment? I always wondered how you could feel a rush of every joy, every disappointment, every sadness, and every loss in a mere flutter of fading breath.

Now I know.

That final breath makes you feel that peace of stretching out as a child in a grassy field, watching stars glint back at you and then fade into darkness. It makes you feel your mother's hands, soft and warm, pulling you from a childhood nightmare, clinging to your small frame. One single breath brings back the mounting hope and fear that comes with the birth of your first daughter; that indescribable feeling of holding her in your arms for the very first time.

When you begin to fade, it feels like a lover's lips. Hesitant at first, then slowly inviting, wanting, needing for you to slip away, to give in. In my heart, Kate was my lover, but not in a way most perceive. I love her in a way that's incommunicable. I love her in a way, that I learned, never needed words; that could leave me spellbound without touch.

I watched as the arsonist from our case lit a match and held it dangerously close to Kate's face. His other hand held a gun deep into my forehead.

My stomach flipped.

She thrashed violently against her bondage.

I realize the corners of the room are lined with gasoline. He is going to shoot us, then burn this apartment where we found him, leaving nothing but our ashes behind.

"You should have listened to her," he tells me, and in the low light coming from candles on the edge of his room, I can see his past burns creep up his face like blackened spiders. His grey eyes were like the dullest of ash that remains after bonfires. "If she weren't so preoccupied with telling you to stay behind, she might have seen me in the stairwell waiting. But I see you followed me here, Mr. Castle."

He blew out the match causing ringlets of smoke to invade my nostrils.

"I had a feeling you were still following her, even though she told you otherwise." The gun presses harder. "What did you think? You were going to come here and pull a James Bond?"

"Sherlock Holmes, actually," I offer. Just anything for an extra second, I tell myself, an extra minute.

His laugh was humorless.

As an author I am supposed to picture these people with a childhood, a traumatic event, something that drove them into the direction of crime forever. But in the moment, I cannot honestly place any glimpse of humanity in this man. He murdered his own family and now he was slowly and effortlessly taking my world from me, torturing the woman who I had the fortune to call a friend.

"I had already called the NYPD," I say. "They are coming, and you could not run out of here fast enough before they catch up."

"Nice work, Sherlock," he offers, "but if I kill you two, and burn this old apartment house down, who will say this ever happened?"

He clicks off the safety and prepares to shoot me.

Small moments come to mind first. Pervasive memories. Little glimpses of humanity, so fragile, yet so indelible.

I see my mother singing a Broadway song because, in my mind, that is somebody who she will forever be to me. She is vibrancy. She is life. She is freedom.

I see my daughter. I see her pinning up her hair in a ponytail, carefully tucking in the stray ends. I see her catching my gaze from the doorway, mystified that the little toddler who clutched her little hand to mine was now a grown woman. That is Alexis. She is beauty. She is intelligence. She loves. She taught me how to live.

Then I see her. Kate…Kate…_Kate_…

She's trying not to smile at a joke I muttered under my breath, that goddamn-gorgeous smile of hers is spreading on her face, creating warmth within me. All of a sudden the emotions run in torrents and I want to burst, to pull her in and kiss her like I have always wanted, let our hearts uncover the fire that had been burning long ago, but I can't. That is who Kate is to me. She is everything I hoped for in my life, desperately reaching out in the darkness to attain. She is somebody I always want to be there for. I feel it every time she smiles.

She is cringing now.

The arsonist strikes the side of the gun into my forehead, making me double backward.

I can see Kate from the corner of my eyes as I let them flicker open for a moment, my head still searing with pain. I can taste my own blood dripping from the killer's thrash to my face. It slowly pours down my forehead. It reminds me of that coppery taste of well water my mother told me not to try at a park where they had the old fashioned pump.

It tastes like betrayal. _"Don't go for this one, Castle. Please just listen to me. We're going rogue for this one off of your guesswork. I don't need the added fear of injury. "_

She begged me. We fought. We shouted. I reminded her we were partners.

With the blood, I feel sweat. It is sticky and makes my skin feel even colder as the gun barrel presses deeper into my forehead.

"If you would die for her and follow her like I have seen," the killer says in a hushed murmur, breath slipping into my ear as he thrashes my weakened body into a wall, "then why wouldn't you live with her, for her, love her?"

"I have," I whisper back, watching Kate's eyes widen as she thrashes against her bondage, "in the only way I could."

The killer clenches his teeth. "All fires will eventually consume themselves, you fool."

I falter, wondering what he means, when the gun draws closer again.

I do not think Kate heard what I had told the arsonist, or what he said, she just knew this was it. I never want to see that look in her eyes again, that utter defeat and binding sadness that should never be there. So, I look at her one last time, eyes trying to tell her what my words never could.

I struggle to remove the gun from the killer's hands as a final resort. I hear a shot fired. He swears and shouts he had one bullet…I almost can hear her screaming against her mouth tie…

I barely saw his fist.

I never saw his knife.

Those memories, those small flickers of hope, played in the screen of my mind for a second. All at once.

As I am falling, I smell the faintest drift of flame. He set the room on fire. I feel my face hit the hardwood floor and there is black. Midnight black. Like a cloudy night sky that will never fill with stars.

**Kate Beckett**

As I watch him fall, I am feeling everything I should not feel.

That gave me that inner strength to tear free from my bonds. That is what drove me to pick up my discarded gun from the floor, slowly walk forward after he threw a match to the gasoline drenched corner of the room, and fire rounds in this killer's chest.

He crumples and falls into me, blood seeping into my clothing. He knew he won. That is why his face was frozen in a smile. His glassy eyes stare lifelessly into my own. Even the eyes of the dead still reflect fire.

**Richard Castle**

Maybe it is her hands running along my face, maybe it is her voice urging me to come back, but I cannot tell. All I know is that if that voice were a light, I would follow it.

All I see is darkness.

In a whisper, I ask where is the light, but I have a feeling the thought never passed through my lips. Instead, I feel lips pressed fiercely against mine…and then nothing else.

**Kate Beckett**

I told the team I did not need a ride home.

I grasp the steering wheel tighter in an attempt to distract myself from the pang that is swelling within my chest. It's raining outside my parked car, but it is as if the storm is inside. I feel like I am drowning in my own car as I watch beads of water cling to each other and flow down the windshield. It looks so much like sweat. When I blink again, it flashes red, it looks like blood.

His blood…

"Kate?"

I look up and then to where he sits beside me. His forehead was bandaged by a paramedic who came to the scene. His hand, which was slit by the knife after the arsonist struck his head violently, was wrapped hurriedly in more gauze. His face still had dried blood on it. His shirt was covered in his own blood that came flowing from his face and hand that lay limp on his chest when he fell.

That sound of him falling...

I hear it on repeat in my mind as a sickening clash of skull meeting hardwood floors.

When he did not come to back there, I watched as the room was immersed in thick clouds of black smoke. I began coughing every time I called out to him and tried to get him up. He did not move. He did not breathe.

I pulled him under the arms and began to drag his body.

There was no way in hell I was leaving him to burn in that building.

I stopped at the end of the hall to where my strength gave away and he slipped from my arms. Body met hardwood floors.

I wove my fingers together and knelt beside him. My intertwined hands pushed rhythmically against his chest. My lips were on his, but to bring back his consciousness which had faded. I heard a small voice telling me that it is not supposed to be this way…This is supposed to be in the fury of desire, of need, me pushing him against a wall and kissing him breathless, him driving me under.

Then reason told me I had Josh. He was there for me.

For the first time, reason sounded a lot like a lie. I know this because my job entails loving the truth and detectives are married to this idea. To a detective truth is like the most beautiful individual and we are the most jealous of lovers.

That's another thing about detectives. We rarely let others get a glimpse of our own truth, the ones beyond our cases, the personal ones. When you hide them accordingly, you are not transparent. If we weren't, criminals would not see their guilt glinting back at them from the blank canvass of our faces.

But today the truth slipped. It came pouring out of me in a passionate rush before I could stop it. It's like trying to stop the water flow from a broken dam with a water glass. It doesn't happen.

When he began to come to, I saw his face was covered in beads of water.

Sweat, I told myself.

But, when he sat up, after coughing violently, he gazed at me. He reached out, and with the pad of his thumb he slowly wiped away the tears I did not even realize were spilling from my eyes. With a twist in my stomach I realized that water on his face were my tears that fell onto him.

He did not start it. I did not start it.

Before I could register what our bodies were doing, my lips were fused with his. Castle's back was plastered into the wall, my kneeling body beside him on the floor, pushing him deeper into it. Fire. That was all I felt as he registered what was happening before I did. His hands came to my face and he met that passion. My tongue left his mouth. He brought my lip between his teeth; his hands ran through my hair.

He opened his eyes.

I pulled away.

I realized our kiss had lasted but a moment.

The empty tenement knockdown was smoldering but other fires had burned longer, and now swelled brighter. I felt dizzied trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Why did that feel so…expected?

I said nothing to him as we left, and pulled his arms over my shoulder as we made our way through the stairwell. Not because I needed any more of our physical contact to cloud my mind; he could not walk well.

When we were finally out and in the pouring rain, the NYPD came in droves. We had a confession from our arsonist, even a tape of it too, but it did not matter anymore.

His body was already claimed by the fire's gnarled hands that took the entire emptied tenement house with it.

I watched as the building roared with flames, and then I felt that sickened rush again. I still saw the arsonist's eyes in my mind. I heard Castle's body hit hardwood floors. The sound he made when we kissed…

I caught Castle watching me in the corner of my eye, then. He pretended to be occupied with the fire and the way it looked like it would catch to another emptied building. I spoke first.

"Don't worry, Castle. All fires eventually burn themselves out."

He merely shrugged. "Do they?"

As silence pervaded, I knew he was not talking about the fire that ravaged the tenement.

**Richard Castle**

I did not ask Kate where she was driving me.

I merely watched her, her dark eyes darting nervously across the intersection, staring at cars in the turning lane as if they had transformed into flying bullets about to strike her. Then, her eyes would trace the droplets falling down the windshield, later glancing sideways at my chest, my shirt still covered with my own blood.

Her face was covered in my blood. It happened when she kissed me, or I kissed her. I still do not know who started it. It felt so routine it scared me. Like that just happened naturally. I think that is why it scared her, too.

As I watched the city rush by, this all felt like a surreal compilation of events, all fading intricately into one another. Like with a blend of all colors, a blend of events becomes a whirl of black.

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The car ride seemed endless.

She never looked me in the eye. She said nothing. I was not able to say anything, anyway. Just the slight sigh of her breathing, however shaky it may be, was everything and all I wanted to hear.

My eyes did not even dare to trace the curve of her lips.

Finally her car rounded close to my apartment and my heart fell.

_That was it_, I thought.

She would drop me off; I would go home to my family, pretending that nothing had happened. I was fine. Except this time, it would be harder to give myself that false reassurance.

Now I have physical scars like the ones of the mind that are hidden deep beneath the pestered and bleeding surface of my own skin. My family can see those. It is hard to keep pretending I am fine when the thought of losing her makes me sick. I don't want to pretend this all means nothing. I don't want to forget the feverish fire of her lips. Sure, this was not opportune, that was not supposed to happen, but it did. Through the ashes, new life can be born.

Did Kate know…did she know that what I believed to be my last thoughts were of her?

I closed my eyes, dismissing even the possibility of telling her. After all, I don't want to ruin what we have in friendship, but sometimes, I feel like even that is slipping. I have a feeling we both secretly fear we are on this thin sheet of ice, afraid that going further will bring our relationship to ruin and shatter that ice and we will plunge under into the waters of uncertainty. I know she has fallen into these waters and drowned before. Nobody was there for her.

But I think we can be like the photographer who places hesitant feet out to walk across an ice covered pond, and upon reaching the end, he catches the rarest glimpse of beauty that can only be perceived by taking that risk.

Life is a risk. Love is a risk.

Beauty is what remains after the risk is taken. In this same way, we would never know happiness if we never knew sadness, we would never know success if we never dealt with failure.

I clutched onto my jacket, ready to get out at my apartment when she stopped me with a slight brush of her hand.

"We are not stopping here," was all she said.

**Kate Beckett**

"Sit," I say, gesturing to the sofa as we enter my apartment.

He sits on my couch after a bit of hesitation and I flip on the T.V. I do this not because I want to watch something. Actually, that is the least thing I want to do right now. I just like the noise; anything to blot out the voices swimming in my head and the memory of me screaming when he stopped breathing after he hit the floor. To block out the sound of his moan when our lips clashed. Or mine…

I leave him in the living room without a word, and I pad down the hallway with bare feet to my bathroom. With the door still open, I watch duly at the way the light scales down the hardwood floors. It looks like they're on fire.

I turn away.

When I glance in the mirror, I finally realize how unlike myself I look. His blood is the first thing I notice. Second are my eyes. They are haunted, sleep-deprived from taking on this tolling case, and reddened. My lips are pale, ashen, and set in a strict line.

Then, for a moment, I wonder what my heart looks like right now if I could see it. It's beating madly, yet it feels like it is failing me. I remember the victim of one of my first cases had their heart cut out when he was killed. In my mind I can still see an indelible image of the intricate capillaries, veins, and tissues. I wondered who could stop such a convoluted and perplexing muscle.

As I bear the full weight of my arms on the ledge of my sink, I feel my legs giving way. My eyes snap shut for the briefest moment and I feel warm, hot tears falling. I try to stop them, but it is no use.

My mother's words strike me like a knife from my memory:

"_Katie, tears are strength in the fear of losing those you love."_

Then I hear him near the doorway and I remember I left the door open. I tell him to leave and he asks me if he can do anything to help.

"Just do whatever," I snap.

But then I let out a small gasp. I can feel warmth rising in my abdomen. Hands. When I look up, into his face, I realize he has silently come behind me through the open door, his arms wrapping me into an embrace.

Before I close my eyes, I see us… together…staring back at me in the mirror.

**Richard Castle**

Our embrace is over too soon. We both break at the same time, realizing that this could not be the time. At least, that is what her eyes tell me.

We both sit on the bathroom floor. She goes to her cabinet and pulls out a darker towel and then brings it to the tub, submersing it in warm water. She exhales deeply.

She wordlessly steps over and kneels right in front of where I sit on the floor. Her hands begin to trace the edge of my wound creeping from the gauze on my head. I told myself I was spinning at the blood loss when I felt her hands flow tenderly across my face, the towel wiping away my own dried blood.

Her finger traces the blood that went down my neck.

I shudder at her touch. She quietly apologizes. I told her it is okay.

With my permission she begins to remove my shirt, button by button, until it falls like a darkened ghost to the floor. I feel everything a man should not feel for a woman who was not his when her hands come across my bare chest, then my back, clutching the dark towel in their descent.

Then she gets up quickly as my gaze was about to meet hers. She adds more warm water to the towel and sits beside me on the floor again, but this time, she looks straight at me, eyes burning with…I still don't know.

"_Wash it all away,"_ she whispers.

She slowly pulls her bloodstained grey sweater over her head, leaving her top half in nothing but a bra, revealing the arsonist's blood, and probably my blood that seeped onto the bare skin of her neck and down her abdomen. But it was purely my blood on her face. I begin to wash that away first.

Her skin was so pale, like paper.

With a gravitating sadness, my mind tells me how this should have happened. I am the one pulling off her sweater as she tugs with an equal vigor to unbutton my shirt. We are not washing away fear which happens to be crimson in color; blood. We are not faced with the whispers of death that will pervade our nightmares tonight. Instead, we are whispering those words in the darkness as we make love, a fire to smolder emptiness. I am tired of facing these things alone, and I know she is, too.

But then reality tears me out of the shelter of my mind, and it is as cold as the tiles of the bathroom, as vacant as her empty stare to the floor.

The slight arch of her neck as she glances down at the bathroom floor reveals strangle marks where the killer cruelly wrapped his fingers around her, trying to cut off her air. The beautiful milk white of her neck was a mournful shade of a sickened grey and deepening purple. I move forward. My eyes ask for permission and I kiss her neck slowly. But, she breathes my name and inhales. _"Castle…"_

I force myself to stop, but swallowing the urge is a lot what I imagine consuming fire to be like. I reach out instead, and gently trace the injury he inflicted on her neck with my fingers; then the bruises I saw from his blow to her abdomen when he bound her.

She looks up at me, dark eyes only meeting mine for a moment.

"_I look like a mess,"_ was her shamed whisper.

I picked up the towel and let it slide down her back with my hands. She exhales. I let my chin rest on her shoulder, and finally she nudges her head so it rests beside mine. I breathe in the scent of her, feeling her hair brush against my nose.

"_You will forever be beautiful," _was my reply.

I sigh, feeling her cold features finally warm into a smile against my ear.

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Kate drove me home that night in the pouring rain, joking about wanting her large grey police academy t-shirt that she gave me back. Like she said, _"No false stories as to how you obtained it and I might just let you keep it."_ If you're wondering, I still have it.

When I came home that day when the winter faded into spring, when Kate almost lost me and I almost lost everything, I hugged my mother and daughter a little longer than necessary and even though I did not come home with a shirt covered in blood (and had Beckett's shirt hidden under a black coat, mind you), they still knew something had happened. They asked what the forehead injury was all about; I said it was time for me to make them dinner.

I was not in the mood for lying, or telling the truth.

I sit here wondering if Kate felt it too that night; a flicker of an ember, a silent agreement to begin something that was and will be beautiful. I can't help but wonder because today she came to me with the admittance that her relationship with Josh was severed and was falling to ruin for some time. I did only what I knew how to do, and with words failing me, I was silent.

I embraced her.

I don't know how long it will be before anything happens.

I don't know for certain if anything will ever happen.

I don't know that anything will ever last.

All I know is this:

Real love does not constantly need words, does not constantly need touch.

Love needs understanding. Love waits.

Beauty is found in the simple, in the silence, waiting to be heard.

How do I know?

I have heard it.

Some fires are never consumed.

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><p><strong>Author's Note: Their relationship always breathes through the subtext, the unsaid. I hope you got a glimpse of that here with the character's thoughts. Also note that I am not an arsonist with my excessive fire metaphors. *shifty eyes* Stay classy, folks. I would deeply appreciate you sharing any thoughts on this.<strong>


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